HP launches product blitz for virtualisation

Hewlett-Packard has announced a broad sweep of new virtualisation products along with survey results claiming that most businesses aren't making the most of what the technology has to offer.

The products include a ProLiant blade server "built from the ground up" for virtualisation, four thin-client computers for virtualising desktops, new equipment for virtualising storage and some consulting services.

Virtualisation is most widely used today for consolidating servers in data centres, which can help cut costs and reduce energy use. HP is trying to sell the technology as a way to make businesses more competitive, by freeing up IT resources that can be repurposed quickly to create new services.

"Today, many companies are focused only on how virtualisation reduces cost; we believe it enables much more," says Ann Livermore, head of HP's Technology Solutions Group, in a video on HP's Web site.

On the desktop, HP is trying to push virtualisation beyond call centres and into offices, for use by business analysts, engineers and even financial traders. It announced four thin-client PCs that will ship in October, two with its ThinConnect operating system, one with Windows CE and one with Windows XP Embedded.

It also announced that its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software and blade PCs now support Citrix Systems' XenDesktop software, which was announced in May. VDI lets a company run multiple desktop OS environments on a server and is geared toward "basic productivity workers." HP also offers blade PCs, which use a dedicated server blade for each desktop environment, for workers who need more compute power.

The thin clients cost about US$199 each when bought in volume, and each blade PC works out to about $1,000, says Tad Bodeman, director of product marketing for HP's client virtualisation business.

For the data centre, HP says its new BL495c blade server is built for virtualisation because it has 16 DIMM slots for a possible 128G bytes of memory, up to eight network connections per blade and two solid-state disk drives.

"When you're consolidating underutilised servers into a single platform, which is what many customers are doing with virtualisation, that platform has to be very expandable," says Mark Potter, general manager of HP's BladeSystem Group. "Memory and I/O are the things that tend to get bottlenecked first."

The server comes with one or two quad-core Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices and hypervisor software from VMware, Citrix or Microsoft. Pricing starts at $2,449 for a single processor, 4G bytes of memory and the hypervisor.

Also new is StorageWorks 4400 Scaleable NAS File Services, which can be combined with HP's 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array to create a virtual storage pool that can be shared among servers connected to the system, according to HP.

"All the servers will have read/write access to all the storage, so an administrator can create pools of storage resources that can be mapped more easily to where they need to be," Potter says.

The system comes with 4.8 terabytes of storage, expandable to 96 terabytes. It is priced from $94,270 for the Windows File Services version and $97,630 for the Linux File Services version.

HP also announced enhancements to its HP-UX operating system, some "fixed-price" consulting services and software updates for managing virtual environments. More information about the new consulting services as well as the other announcements are available on HP's Web site.

Distributor Directory

Vendor Directory

Featured

Slideshows

Opening ice breaker sessions set the scene for EDGE 2017

​EDGE 2017 kicked off with an opening ice breaker session, providing a structured environment for channel executives to form and foster new relationships and business opportunities. Photos by Maria Stefina.​

Copyright 2017 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.